Green Guidance Workshop in Marseille – Guidance and careers in the time of ecological transition
Building a sustainable future together! This was the theme of the 2024 annual conference of the Erasmus+ France Agencies, co-organized with the Finnish Agency. It took place on December 3 and 4 in Marseille. Nearly 150 European stakeholders in education, youth and sports, from 15 countries, discussed the skills needed for the ecological transition and the Erasmus+ program’s responses to mobility challenges. We are pleased to have been invited to lead a workshop on the theme of green guidance.
The French teams of EPALE, Euroguidance and the Green Guidance Lab have chosen to host a workshop entitled: “Career guidance and careers in the era of ecological transition with Erasmus+”. To discuss this topic, 3 speakers were invited:
Isabelle Dekeister, National Education Psychologist associated with the European Euroguidance network => The origin and concept of Green guidance
Tomas Sprlak, Career counsellor, Eurofop => Presentation of the results of a European survey conducted as part of the Erasmus + project “Exploring green guidance“.
André Chauvet, Lab Green Guidance, career guidance expert and consultant => Transformation scenarios: towards sustainable professional lives
The presentations were followed by a QA session and a discussion around some of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Workshop summary
Marco Cecchinato, coordinator of EPALE French-speaking Belgium, was the workshop rapporteur. Here is the summary he was able to make, during the restitution time in plenary. Many thanks to him!
“In this workshop, we discussed the need to support individuals in change/towards change, to green their practices, to reorient themselves… and who is better suited than career counselors to be the artisans of this change?
The subject seems simple and innocuous but it is complex. We are in a period of all-out change that must push us to rethink our lifestyles, our practices and in this regard, career counselors have a key role but their job must also evolve. We will then speak of “green guidance”.
Note that guidance, although closely linked to the professional sphere, is also related to the staff and is tinged, among other things, with emotion. It induces a transformational dynamic of the self, one’s entourage and one’s environment.
We will also distinguish two “currents” depending on whether we speak of “light green guidance”, which is rather wait-and-see and non-directive, and “dark green guidance”, which will be rather radical and proactive. In any case, it is a profession that must “green” itself to “green” other professions…
However, there are obstacles, such as the lack of awareness of green guidance, the lack of models or resources related to this practice. It can also be specified that the individual himself must ask himself questions, for example that of making his work “habitable” and “meaningful”.
We have also seen the notion of acting, of being able to act, of transforming work from the inside and of investing in work differently.
It also appears that this subject can be divisive… How can we raise awareness without making people feel guilty? The question of “is it really useful? Isn’t it too late?” of “Why should I, an individual, bear this responsibility for sustainability on my shoulders, should I bear the burden of this change? And companies? And states? »
Finally, there is also hope, especially in young people, who are aware, despite their eco-anxiety, of the need for these changes. We must find meaning and educate the new generations, in addition to adopting new “sustainable” behaviors, educating them to know how to make choices… and this transition as well as green guidance cannot be done without being anchored to social justice… »
(Article originally publishen on EPALE.)
